The mother of a newborn baby rescued from a sewer pipe[2] in easternChina[3] will not face criminal charges and will retain custody of her son, authorities in China have said.

The case of the little boy – known only as Baby 59 – sparked a wave of sympathy around the world when footage of his rescue by firefighters and medics emerged. At first officials in Pujiang county, Zhejiang province, said they were treating it as attempted murder, believing he had been dumped by his parents.

But they have concluded that he was trapped by accident after it emerged that a woman who raised the alarm was in fact his mother. The unmarried 22-year-old had hidden her pregnancy and secretly delivered the baby[4] on Saturday in the shared bathroom; she said he had slipped into the squat toilet by accident.

An official in Pujiang county’s propaganda office told Associated Press on Thursday that police concluded the unwed woman did not initially identify herself as the mother out of fright.

[8] Newborn baby of 23st mother and her SIX siblings taken into care ‘over obesity fears’: http://www.prisonplanet.com/newborn-baby-of-23st-mother-and-her-six-siblings-taken-into-care-over-obesity-fears.html